Naomi Klein wrote a recent column in The Guardian about a protest speech at the Academy Awards by Jonathan Glazer, who was accepting the Best International Film award for The Zone of Interest inspired by the life of the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp.
“The film follows Rudolf Höss’s idyllic domestic life with his wife and five children, which unfolds in a stately home and garden immediately adjacent to the concentration camp,” Klein wrote. “Glazer has described his characters not as monsters but as ‘non-thinking, bourgeois, aspirational-careerist horrors,’ people who manage to turn profound evil into white noise.”
Glazer, who is Jewish, said he objected to “the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation which has led to conflict for so many innocent people, whether the victims of 7 October in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza.”
Glazer said the genocide became ambient to the lives of people who participated in the Holocaust. Klein drew parallels to the current acceptance and even approval of genocide in Gaza.
“More than five months into the daily slaughter in Gaza, and with Israel brazenly ignoring the orders of the international court of justice, and western governments gently scolding Israel while shipping it more arms, genocide is becoming ambient once more – at least for those of us fortunate enough to live on the safe sides of the many walls that carve up our world,” Klein wrote.
Glazer has received a huge backlash for speaking out even as the death toll in Gaza is estimated at more than 32,000, two-thirds of those women and children. Nothing justifies the Hamas terrorist attacks that provoked this war. But does killing 25 times more people than were killed in Israel on October 7 really help eliminate Hamas? Or does it create more terrorists? Does letting the survivors starve to death make Israel safer? Or is it a war crime?
Klein’s column made me take a hard look at whether I have been “ambient” about accepting the Gaza genocide. I feel helpless influencing national policies that have led to the United States providing weapons that allowed Israel to level Gaza. But I decided I could at least make a donation to a group providing food to starving people.
After Hurricane Katrina devasted my community on the Gulf Coast, the first to arrive – and last to leave –were the non-profit groups. A non-profit called World Central Kitchen has been doing remarkable work since 2010, responding the feed people after natural disasters and during wars.
Just days after I sent in a donation in mid-March, I got an email that this group had done something said to be impossible: Delivering food to Gaza by sea.
“World Central Kitchen provided almost 200 tons of food in northern Gaza that arrived on our first maritime aid shipment,” the email said. “The food that reached families facing starvation arrived aboard the first humanitarian shipment to reach the Gazan coast in nearly two decades. Alongside local and international partners, WCK has provided more than 39 million meals by land, sea, and air to Palestinians in need.
“Today’s delivery of rice, flour, legumes, vegetables, and proteins to families in the north, where access to aid is highly restricted, proves desperately needed food can be delivered by sea. In addition to the food that arrived by sea on the Open Arms boat, today’s convoy to the north also carried ready-to-eat meals.
“For months, our teams across the region have worked nonstop to open this maritime aid route into Gaza. We are sourcing and loading food onto boats in Cyprus and built our own jetty in Gaza using rubble, including from bombed buildings, to safely unload cargo.”
The recent Israeli bombing of a car with seven WCK aid workers has put a halt to food deliveries by WCK and other charitable groups. WCK founder José Andrés was quoted saying he believes the group’s aid workers were targeted systematically; it was no accident. A United Nations expert said Israel is using starvation as a tactic in its war against Hamas. More than 200 aid workers have been killed in Gaza.
President Joe Biden has condemned the attacks. A short while earlier, he approved sending Israel 1,800 Mark 84 bombs weighing 2,000 pounds, each capable of leveling a city block. The massive scenes of destruction in Gaza are horrifying. Nearly 1.8 million Palestinians have been displaced and nearly a million are facing starvation. And the United States is sending the Israelis more mega bombs?
To tell Biden what you think about this, go to whitehouse.gov/contact/. To donate to WCK, which provides help about the world, go to wck.org/donate.